Isabel Díaz Ayuso has described “indigenismo” as a “new communism” that threatens to create a false history of what happened in the past and to dynamite “the Spanish legacy in America”, as she has just defended in New York. Without a single mention of the millions of people who died after the Spanish conquest of the continent, the president of the Community of Madrid has reduced this movement – or plurality of movements -, which vindicates the political and social identity of Indians and mestizos in America , to a “populist revolution” that calls into question “the miscegenation and fusion of cultures”, synonyms, in his opinion, of “freedom, prosperity, peace and understanding.” And he has said it in a country where not only Indians suffered a catastrophe in the past, but they continue to be marginalized and live in deplorable conditions, as seen during the coronavirus pandemic.
In the same week in which the Pope reiterated his apologies to Mexico for the “very painful mistakes” committed by the Catholic Church, Ayuso has made an uncompromising defense of Hispanity and has reproached Francisco, a Catholic and Spanish speaker, for state in such terms. “His statements confirm his ignorance and his completely dogmatic vision of history, when history has many lights and shadows and one can have very varied opinions about the legacy of Spain in America,” explains historian and philosopher José Luis Villacañas in a telephone conversation , author among many other works by Imperiophilia and National-Catholic Populism (Editorial Lengua de Trapo).
“Ayuso has a problem of democratic sensitivity and ideas that border on fanaticism, since he imposes a certain idea of freedom, his, in which the Spanish and the Catholic” cannot be questioned, a discourse that, according to Villacañas, drinks essayists such as María Elvira Roca Barea, author of Imperiophobia and black legend. “By not being in a position to recognize what Spain did in the past, Ayuso may repeat it.”
These are some passages that Ayuso has slipped during his trip to the United States:
1. “The Spanish legacy was to bring Catholicism to the American continent”
In addition to Catholicism and the Castilian language, the conquest brought disease, warfare, and slavery to America. Although it is impossible to count the number of Indians killed in America as a consequence of the conquest, in what many historians have called “the holocaust indigenous ”, various researchers consider that approximately eight million people died only during the first years of the Spanish conquest of America.
A study published in 2019 in the Quaternary Science Reviews He estimates that before Christopher Columbus arrived in America in 1492, 60.5 million people lived on the continent. “European epidemics killed 90% of the population over the next century,” the research calculates. According to his calculations, by 1600 some “56 million Native Americans” had died.
2. “Spain brought freedom” to America
Although there were documented slavery practices in America prior to 1492, the discovery of the continent was not accompanied by freedom for its inhabitants. Spain did not sign until 1817 a treaty by which the slave trade was prohibited, although not slavery itself. According to the historian Martín Rodrigo y Alharilla, professor of Contemporary History at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, “the institution of slavery in mainland Spain was fully legal, at least until 1837; on the Spanish island of Cuba, the illegal trade in enslaved Africans continued until 1867 and the first free bellies law was not approved until 1870 ″. In fact, Spain was the “last European country to outlaw slavery in its American colonies, maintaining its validity until 1873, in the case of Puerto Rico, and until 1886, in the case of Cuba,” as he writes in an article published in this year in the magazine Contemporary history.
3. “Indigenism is the new communism”
Isabel Díaz Ayuso refers to indigenism, giving it another meaning. That is, trying to equate, without nuances, a series of historical demands of the original peoples of America with political projects that generally developed outside of these urgencies. The president of the Community of Madrid speaks of indigenism and then uses words such as “revolution” or “populism”, which in the Latin American context refer to the imaginary of the so-called socialism of the 21st century. However, several of the self-styled Bolivarian governments, for example, Rafael Correa in Ecuador or Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, have had significant sources of opposition in indigenous communities. The former Bolivian president Evo Morales, on the other hand, gave a social and political presence to hundreds of thousands of people after centuries of abuse and segregation, an indisputable achievement that goes beyond ideological positions and that has even been recognized by several of his adversaries. .
The first Inter-American Indigenous Congress was held in Mexico in 1940, in the final stretch of the mandate of Lázaro Cárdenas, one of the references of the current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. It happened in the town of Pátzcuaro, in the State of Michoacán. The main “recommendation” to the rulers that was agreed upon in that conclave had to do with the distribution of land and financial support from the authorities. In the second half of the 20th century, this consensus was maintained, at least on paper, under governments of different colors throughout the continent. However, in practice, in most cases injustices and conditions of insecurity were perpetuated. Organized crime has just murdered five members of the Yaqui people, who inhabit the Sonoran desert in northern Mexico. López Obrador, who has made historical memory an axis of his political project, traveled to that territory on Tuesday to stage the forgiveness of the State. He apologized for “the wars of extermination” and promised an investment of more than $ 500 million. He did not mention, however, the drug violence that plagues those communities.
4. “Through Catholicism, Spain brought civilization to America”
Pope Francis has recognized this week in a letter sent to the Mexican president, Juan Manuel López Obrador, the “very painful mistakes” made in the past by the Catholic Church. “Not understanding that the Pope, because he is Catholic and speaks Spanish, can ask for forgiveness, is to have a dogmatic idea of what it is to be Catholic and speak Spanish, as if by being Catholic and speaking Spanish we had to be defenders of what what Spain and the Catholic Church did in America ”, says José Luis Villacañas.
5. “The great and good achieved by so many administrations walking together after five centuries of this Hispanicity”
Ayuso confuses the current concept of administrations, understood as national or regional governments, with the power structure that Spain deployed in the conquered territories in America, between 1492 and 1898, where there was only one administration, that of the Spanish Empire.
